THE PERSECUTION AND CRIMINALIZATION OF JUVENILES

LET us finger some false prophets who often escape public ridicule because
enough time has elapsed since they made their foolish predictions.

Here is that salesman of the virtues, Bill Bennett, who once co-chaired the
Council on Crime in America, and issued a 1996 report titled "The State of
Violent Crime in America," containing these ominous words and (entirely
inaccurate) predictions: "America is a ticking violent crime bomb. Rates of
violent juvenile crime and weapons offenses have been increasing
dramatically, and by the year 2000, could spiral out of control."

These were the years when headline-seeking criminologists like John DiIulio
of Princeton and Northeastern's James Alan Fox painted lurid scenarios of
"superpredators," meaning urban youth of color, swelling Generation Y by as
much as 24 percent.

In fact, violent juvenile crime rates have plunged during the 1990s,
utterly confounding Bennett, DiIulio and the others. The false prophets
continue to receive handsome salaries, lecture fees and the respectful
attention of book reviewers. The damage wrought by their predictions lives
on in the form of a continuing hysteria about youth crime and the
criminalizing of minority youth.

"The law has taken many terrible turns in the last few years, and the pit
of the law is the juvenile justice system." This is Catherine Campbell, a
civil rights attorney in Fresno. "It stinks. It's rotten to the core. It
should be wiped away and started over. A lot of it begins with putting the
kids of poor parents into foster care. That's how authorities inspire
hatred, anger, frustration and feelings of worthlessness. Our society has
made criminal behavior that wasn't criminal ten years ago. Statutory rape
is the latest craze -- it's no longer "teen-agers in love." Now when a
16-year-old has sex with a 15-year-old it's statutory rape. All kids commit
crimes. Most adults commit crimes. We smoke joints, we have stolen if we
don't steal now, we walked the streets in groups (now called gangs, just
being in one is illegal), we lie on our tax returns.

Campbell again: "The laws have changed, and they are so awful. Take civil
commitment. Used to be the wisdom was you can't predict criminal behavior.
Now the wisdom is that a criminal is everyone who has committed a crime.
He's a criminal now, and will be forever. Nowhere is this theory more
controlling than as to sex crimes. I had a client who at age 15 had sex
with a 7-year old. Both boys. He was charged and convicted of lewd and
lascivious behavior. He went to California Youth Authority.

There, he was diagnosed by diabolical shrinks as a sexual psychopath, and
they kept him in two years longer than his sentence based on new civil
commitment laws that allow that to happen. He finally got out when some
shrink said the kid's gay, let him go. They extended this kid's term every
time he had sex (he lived with other gay boys) or masturbated!"

They get them, and then if they're poor, of color, angry or unsuccessful in
school, they keep them. Through all means available, they keep them in the
criminal system. They search them, harass them, follow them, watch who they
talk with, what they wear. The most minor infraction -- and they are back
in jail.

There are no middle-class gangs, there are only lower-class gangs. And it's
a crime to be in a gang, and it's more time in jail or prison if a crime is
gang-related. You can't really survive on the streets in those bad
neighborhoods without being in a gang (if you're male), so you're criminal
just because you're alive and leave the house. Walk out the door, commit a
crime. And of course the age at which you are an adult for jail and prison
eligibility is lower every year.

The drug laws are of course key to criminalizing youth. The trick is to
take something almost everybody does, and then make it a crime. That way
you can pick and choose who you want to mess with. Kids from all
backgrounds use drugs, but again, only kids from bad neighborhoods get
criminalized for it.

In California, A black teen-ager is six times more likely to be
incarcerated for a first-time violent offense than a white kid. A black
teen-ager is 48 times more likely to do time for a drug offense than a
white kid. In fact, young people of color display the largest declines and
lowest rates of drug abuse of any group."

Maybe those false prophets, Bennett, DiIulio and the others, could kick off
the new year by drawing attention to such facts.

Alexander Cockburn writes for the Creators Syndicate.